


Hope

by ilerya82



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilerya82/pseuds/ilerya82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened to Emma when she popped out of the street leaving nothing but a dagger in her place?  How did our heroes take it?  What will be their plan of action?  Random speculation and high hopes abound.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the cs writing challenge on tumblr.

The determination of the Charming – Swan – Mills – Jones family had never been one to waiver in the face of adversity.  They always had hope.  They were always courageous.  They never just resigned to their fates and believed that there was nothing they could do to sway the outcome with hopeful determination. 

They were Heroes.

They would trudge across realms, face dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, never once believing that they couldn’t fulfill her final request no matter how grim the outlook was.

_“You figured out how to take the darkness out of me once,” she’d spat at them, “You can do it again… As heroes.”_

From the moment Emma had raised the dagger in to the air, she had been swallowed up slowly by the writhing swirls of darkness.  As the magical being, that evil, surrounded her and took her prisoner to its whims she had never taken her eyes off of Killian.  She couldn’t force herself to break the contact.  This may be the last time she would ever see him and though she hadn’t wanted to remember the pain and agony left bare inside them but she didn’t want to forget.  She would not allow the Dark One to make her forget that here, for all the people she loved – her parents, her friends, her son, and him – she would do what she could so they could live.  She couldn’t survive and keep fighting off the evil of the Dark One from the inside if she couldn’t remember those brooding pools of blue that bore in to her soul and tore down all of her walls behind dark lashes. 

It wasn’t long before the darkness did what it was aiming to do, what the darkness did best.  The world went black around her as the darkness snuffed out Storybrooke and the Saviour’s light.

 

* * *

 

Emma’s eyes had locked on to his, she hadn’t taken them off him and he couldn’t bear to release their gaze until the final moment – the moment everything in his life changed – when the darkness had popped out of Storybrooke and left behind only the sound of the Dark One’s dagger clattering to asphalt below in a brilliant blaze of light.  There, taunting him and chipping away at every fibre of his being, lay the coldly beautiful cruelty of the dagger with only a name etched upon its surface.  Emma Swan. 

_Emma_

His beautiful Swan no longer stood in the midst of the street.  The darkness no longer circled her like an unbreakable torrent.  She was gone.  Gone from them, gone from her family and her friends… From him.

_“I love you.”_

For a moment he was frozen in place, the world had seemed to stop around him and as he closed his eyes visions of the golden haired saviour clashed with the etched silver dagger bearing her name.  The last words that she had spoken to him tangling about his vision, his brain, his heart…

_“I love you.”_

He couldn’t breathe, he felt as though the air had been stolen from his very lungs when the dagger hit the ground.  It was stifling, suffocating.  His lungs collapsing in on him as his heart burst in to a million tiny pieces. 

“ _I love you.”_

A million tiny pieces of her.  Emma.  His Swan smiling as they walked arm in arm down Main Street.  Emma laughing and giggling.  Emma tackling him in a hug to the bed what felt like not seconds before in her parents loft.  Emma. 

_“I love you.”_

He heard it over and over again in his head, an audio playback set on loop.  He didn’t notice Charming scoop up the dagger and cradle it to his chest.  He didn’t register the sobs that came from the formerly villainous queen beside him into the shoulder of the archer.  He didn’t register anything but the sound of her voice, the choked sobs she held back as the declaration crackled from the strain and pushed past her lips.

_“I love you.”_

He hadn’t be able to say it back.  He hadn’t had the time. 

_“I love you.”_

Their foreheads had touched and like that she was charging at the swirling mass of dark magic and energy, the dagger raised above her head as she called it to her and drew it inside.  The light inside her fought against it, he knew that was why it had taken the cloudless being of the Dark One to tether itself to the dagger, to her.  He had to get her back. 

_“I love you.”_

His body shuddered and ached as he sucked breath in to his lungs.

_“I love you.”_

Head dipping lower as hand and hook touched his knees and he rested his weary heart upon them as life continued to flow through him with each breath.

_“I love you.”_

He felt a touch to his shoulder, recognized a voice trying to break through the looping cycle of punishing anguish and sorrow.  It was Snow, bowing down before him, her own face stained with the tears of a mother who has lost her child – _AGAIN_ – but determined to bring him back from the edge of the torment because he was a part of their family.  He had felt it in the Enchanted Forest, when he had set off from them for that agonizing year.  When he had thought he had lost her forever.  When he had thought that piracy would be a better option, and that drink was the best way to drown the sorrow of finding his happiness and having it ripped away. 

_“I love you.”_

“We’ll find her, Killian.  That’s just what this family does.  When you love someone, and they love you, you always find each other.”

“I –“

The words caught in his throat.  He couldn’t trust himself to speak, to form the words that hung in the air around him, that he loved her too – that he would!  Dammit he would find her, and together they would all bring her back from the darkness.  Because that was what this family did best, they maintained hope – they found each other. 

“Killian,” Snow rubbed his back in a way that reminded him of his own mother, a haunting memory buried deeply in the corners of his mind, and tried to bring him back to the present, to the moment and the pain inside it.

_“I love you.”_

He closed his eyes again and there she was again, drowning in the darkness as it swallowed her whole. 

“You should come back to the loft with us, Killian.”

_“I love you.”_

He nodded to Snow, as the tears fell.  He hurt for Snow, for David, for Henry… 

Oh, Henry!  The lad had no idea what his mother had done, what had happened – what she’d sacrificed for him – for all of them!

_“I love you.”_

Henry who had saved them all from the alternative musings of Isaac in an Enchanted Forest that seemed bleaker than anything Killian could bear remembering.  The Enchanted Forest had only seemed beautiful with Emma by his side.  Once he knew her, he had known there was no beauty there without her.  That’s what the light does to you; it makes even the darkness beautiful.

They were a motley crew of tear stained faces and glittering eyes when they made their way back to Gold’s shop where Henry and Belle stood guard.  It wasn’t hard for them to know the outcome of the battle just from looking at them.  Belle’s eyes shimmering as the emotion welled within her whilst Henry sank to the floor under the strain. 

It was almost too much for him to bear, but Killian would be strong for Henry.  He would do it for him – for _her_.  He would find his Swan and no matter what, he would speak the words even if she didn’t believe them.

_“I love you.”_

_And I love you._

 

* * *

Snow had become the town Mother in the aftermath, for lack of a better word, because what was needed most of all was compassion in this moment.  Yes, she was angry.  Yes, she was heartbroken.  Yes, she wanted to rage and scream against the heavens for taking her little girl from her again, but she didn’t have the luxury of following that twisted spiral of hopelessness so she did what she did best.  Snow held on to hope. 

She’d had to hold David back, that had not been fun, and she’d felt the sting of his silence and distance more acutely since that moment.  He was livid that she’d stopped him, but really, what else could she do?  Emma was protecting them all.  Again. 

And they had lost her for it… Again.

So taking them all back to the loft to regroup, because they couldn’t take up residence in Gold’s Shop, what with Belle hovering over his magically frozen body checking for signs of movement every few seconds, seemed like a the best way to start.  Regina and Robin huddled in the corner of the love seat, murmuring to each other over the top of a slumbering Roland.  Killian and Henry sat at the table pouring over texts that Belle had given them, murmuring something about finding the Sorcerer being their only hope and how difficult such a task might be.  Snow puttered in the kitchen, squelching the urge to go to Granny’s and demand that they give wake her sleeping baby so that she could hold him tightly to her chest and take comfort that he was still here, that he still needed her.  And then there was David…

Charming sat alone of the stairs, holding the dagger in his hands.  She was sure that he was tracing the imprint of Emma’s name across the blade so furiously that she expected smoke to curl off it as his tears fell onto the metal from the heat of his gaze.  She stole glances at him, but he didn’t move from his seat, didn’t look up or around him.  She wanted to wrap her arms around him, bring him back from the torment that he was drowning in, but she couldn’t move herself away from the kitchen sink. 

Idle busy work of washing last night’s dinner dishes by hand, rather than in the dishwasher he’d recently installed for them, was helping distract her from her paralysing fear.  What if they couldn’t take the darkness out of her this time?  What if Emma was lost to it, as Gold had been?  What if there was nothing left to her but cruelty and darkness?  What if –

She couldn’t take much more of the intrusive thoughts.  They were black and hopeless thoughts that this would be a pointless rescue mission because really, how could they possibly rid her of the Dark One’s curse when they couldn’t even begin to know how to fight that kind of evil?  If even the Sorcerer hadn’t managed to do anything more than tether the Dark One to a person and never been able to defeat it, how could this rag tag band of heroes possibly attempt to try?  She dropped the stock pot back into the bubbly sink and flung the dish towel on the counter with an exasperated sigh.  This was why she had to try to hold on to hope. 

_“You figured out how to take the darkness out of me once…You can do it again… As heroes.”_

Emma was her baby girl, her first baby.  The baby that she had thought she would never have once upon a time and the baby that she had fought so hard to protect and bring in to this world.  Of course she wouldn’t give up on her!  She couldn’t give up hope…

Snow turned herself and looked at David.  This was wrong.  They shouldn’t be feeling this pain separately, mourning the loss of their daughter from their lives and their home.  They should be tackling this problem like they should do all things – _together_. 

She didn’t register her feet moving themselves towards the staircase.  She didn’t notice the fresh tears falling down her face as she brought herself to a halt in front of him.  She only saw David, her Charming, and the sorrow and hopelessness that was taking root inside of his heart. 

He didn’t stiffen when she wrapped her arms around him, but he didn’t look up from the dagger either.  It was hard to tell whether she felt the shaking of his sobs or her own as she moulded herself against him, not letting the dagger leave his grasp but careful not to impale herself as she held tightly to him.  He’d buried his face in the crook of her neck, neither able to remain at a distance from the other, no matter the pain that had befallen them. 

“How can we possibly get her back?”

“We’ll get her back, just like we should do everything David.  Together.”

 

* * *

 

_“You figured out how to take the darkness out of me once…You can do it again… As heroes.”_

David kept his eyes on the dagger as if by sheer will alone he could make Emma reappear safe and whole in loft just by staring it down.  He knew how to stare people down, knew how to use an imposing glare to make a weaker opponent back down from a fight.  He’d learned its value in the many years he’d fought with Snow to take back their kingdom.

_“You figured out how to take the darkness out of me once…You can do it again… As heroes.”_

He could hear Emma’s voice, telling them to find a way to take the darkness from her as heroes this time rattling through every thought.  His first instinct had been to run to her when she’d advanced towards that swirling mass, but Snow had held him back… He knew he shouldn’t hold that against her, he knew that he should walk to the kitchen and take her in his arms because she was struggling under the weight of this just as much as he was, but he couldn’t will his body to move. 

This dagger was all he had left of his daughter.  He would not let it out of his sight for a moment. 

Snow had taken them all in tow to the loft, well, all but Belle who kept a watchful eye out in Gold’s Shop, and had given them all a piece of her hope but the distance and silence between them had meant that she hadn’t attempted to give any to him.  He could use some of that right now, a little of Snow’s unwavering hope.  But Snow didn’t seem to have any of that left to give to him. 

He should get up and go to her.  He should wrap his arms around her and offer her some comfort so that she could let down her walls a little too.  That’s where Emma got it from in the first place –

_“You figured out how to take the darkness out of me once…You can do it again… As heroes.”_

He wanted to rail at Emma’s voice, the haunting echo in his head.  How could they figure anything out?  They weren’t _doing_ anything!   They were at opposite ends of the Earth for all he knew right now, Snow in their kitchen and he on the stairs.  She with her dishes and he with the –

He couldn’t bear to think of this anymore, but he couldn’t pry his eyes away from it.  Emma Swan etched deeply across the curving blade as monstrous and cruel as could be.  A tear slid down the end of his nose on to her name.  Not his baby girl.  Not again…

He couldn’t control the flow of them, as the tears blurred his vision and his body began to shake from the strain of holding back the flood gates.  He didn’t really know when Snow had come to stand before him.  He couldn’t fix on the moment that she had pressed herself against him and taken him in her arms offering the comfort he so desperately desired to give to her but had been too stubborn to do.  Where do you think Emma got that from anyways?

He wasn’t so stubborn to resist his wife’s tears, the ache that turned his body in to her as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. 

“How can we possibly get her back?” he choked out softly.  The scent of vanilla and cinnamon filled his senses as he burrowed deeper in to her embrace. 

“We’ll get her back, just like we should do everything David.  Together.”

The dagger wasn’t forgotten, but he had placed on the stair beside him as he pulled her in to his lap.  They offered each other the comfort they so desperately needed and while they wouldn’t be whole until Emma was returned to them, he held tighter to Snow as his anchor to the world.  She did the same with him. 

“We always find each other,” he murmured and felt her nodding in agreement. 

 

* * *

 

“Well, what I know of the stories is that Merlin was a powerful sorcerer in King Arthur’s court.”

Henry prattled on about Merlin, King Arthur and Camelot… These weren’t names that were unfamiliar to Killian, but they were foggy in his memory, like a forgotten dream.  They’d been pouring over these books retrieved from the Lady Belle’s library for hours now without end in sight and not too many leads when a realization dawned on him.

_“I love you.”_

“Wait, didn’t Lancelot belong to that group as well?  The Knights of the Round?”

The lad rewarded him with a smile, the first he had seen since learning his mother’s fate.  This was a lead, of course it was a lead because Henry’s eyes had brightened as well at the mention of the name. 

“OF COURSE!  Grandma?”

Killian looked over to the stairs where the couple had been huddled together for a while now, the dagger not far from their grasp.  This was a lead.  The Charmings _knew_ Lancelot! 

_“I love you.”_

“Yes, Henry?”

“Lancelot – you knew Lancelot didn’t you?”

The question had caught the Prince and his wife off guard.  They couldn’t tell where the lad was heading but Killian did.  He knew this from the moment they had met in the safe haven in the Enchanted Forest.  Lancelot was the knight that Cora had controlled.  He had been Snow’s friend.

“Yes, he was a good man,” Snow said softly, the added sorrowful memories of the loss of a good friend mingling with the sting of the loss of her child, “But what does Lancelot have to do with finding the Sorcerer?”

Only one word was spoken, and it was the only word needed to be spoken to bring the rag tag group together about the dining table. 

_“I love you.”_

Killian let the name fall from his lips. 

“Merlin.” 

Everyone’s attention had been caught by the mention of the name.  The most powerful sorcerer any of them knew of was the sorcerer of legend, the one that was playing havoc with their lives, the one that could free Emma from the prison of the dagger.  Merlin was a trusted member of King Arthur’s court… In Camelot… Where Lancelot had resided!

“Merlin?  What does that old fool have to do with any of this?”  Regina’s tone was biting and all Killian could think was that there was apparently no love lost between them.  She didn’t hold him in the highest regard, but if what the Apprentice had said was true – if Merlin was _the_ Sorcerer…

“The Apprentice, he named the sorcerer Merlin,” Henry’s hope was contagious.  It was blossoming and blooming around them. 

_“I love you.”_

“If we can find a portal of some kind –“

“If we could just get there –“

“I think I can help with that part,” Henry smiled as he pulled out the quill, newly reformed from his early decision to break it, and a vial of ink.   

Hope was the sweetest, headiest drug of all.  

_“I love you.”_

Killian couldn’t fathom anything sweeter than his reunion with his Swan and her reunion with her family.  The hope that spring forth as Henry began to explain what he thought they could do or how this could possibly go… It was a lot to take in, but they were all ready for the challenge. 

_Hold on Emma, we’re coming._

 

* * *

 

The first thing they had tried was to summon the newly minted Dark One with the dagger.  Each of the rag tag group of heroes taking turns to repeat the words “Dark One I summon thee” while holding the dagger before their bodies in the middle of Main Street, but to no avail.  She could feel every summoning like a tug against her, but something kept her bound in place, in the darkness and she couldn’t find her way out. 

Wherever she was, she couldn’t leave.   She couldn’t move.  It was like being chained in the tower of that alternate universe all over again.  She knew what she had done, knew what she had had to do, but she couldn’t move.  It was like there was a war raging on inside of her.  The strongest of the light magics and dark magics battling for supremacy and ultimate control of her body, heart, mind and soul.  She couldn’t tell which side was winning.

Emma fought against the fog that kept her under, but she couldn’t break free, couldn’t open her eyes.

_You mustn’t stop fighting the darkness Emma.  You mustn’t let it take control of you._

The hollow voice kept repeating those words, and she knew it was right.  She’d never heard it before – an Englishman, she thought, or maybe she was just imagining it.  Killian’s voice had a similar lilt to it and it was comforting to think of even if the inflection and tone was not the same. 

_They will come for you, you know they will, you just need to stay calm and fight against the darkness until we can purge you of it._

_It must be the Sorcerer!_ Emma thought, though she couldn’t see how she could answer him.  She wanted to ask how they would even know where to look for her – for them – if they didn’t know that she was wherever she happened to be.  Lost in some dark abyss of fog that kept her a prisoner of her own mind, how was anyone going to find her?

_They must succeed, as must I.  I need you to keep fighting, my girl, until you feel that you cannot fight anymore and then I need you to keep going.  The only way home to love is to fight for it – because True Love is the most powerful magic of all!_

She was really getting sick of that line!  If that’s the case, then why wasn’t Gold freed because Belle seemed to truly love him?  How was that not True Love?  And if it were that simple, why would he not be free of the Dark One curse as well?  And what happens to the Dark One when a person is released like that anyways?

_True Love will set you free – and I shall imprison the Dark One – I have finally learned how to defeat it after all these years.  You just have to keep fighting, my girl!_

Well, if a fight was what the darkness wanted, let it come at her.  She’d just have to push it back and tell it that she was the light; she wasn’t going to be what it wanted her to be.  _No one decides my fate but me!_  

Emma Swan would win her freedom.  There was no one better at fighting for survival than she was, though she did hope her precious pirate would hurry up and get here…

 

* * *

 

As the wee morning hours broke, Killian stared out the window over the street below. 

_“I love you.”_

He couldn’t sleep, as the others had insisted was required, because he couldn’t put the sight of Emma tangled in the coils of dark magic from his mind.  Every time he closed his eyes, she was there.  Every time his mind wandered he heard her voice. 

_“I love you.”_

It was an echo of a moment that should have been something so much more.  It should have been a joyous event – he’d thought she was about to say it when she straddled him on the bed when the world was set to rights.  That one thing that she had thought she wouldn’t get the chance to tell him.  He had thought it was because she didn’t feel as he did, that she enjoyed his company but didn’t feel the depth of emotion quite the same – or that he was undeserving of her love. 

He was wrong. 

_“I love you.”_

He was so, so wrong and now he was staring out at a world that didn’t have her in it and wondering how he could have failed her in safeguarding her heart so terribly that she had ultimately become the embodiment of the thing he had always hated most.  And yet he loved her…  Dark One or not she was still his Swan and he would fight to the death, follow her to the ends of the worlds (or time) to ensure her happiness. 

He wanted nothing more than for her to be with her family, which was why he had brought her back to them time and again.  He couldn’t bear to think that she thought herself alone in the world and unloved when there were so many people who cared for her so deeply.  It was her happiness he thought of when he’d outrun the curse, not exclusively because he hoped that he would have a place in that happiness, or rather dreamed he could perhaps – someday…

_“I love you.”_

He could hear footsteps behind him, a steady tread that he’d come to know well as those of the Prince.  He didn’t turn away from the window, but he shuffled over a little making room for him to join him in his silent vigil.  If Emma wasn’t here to do it herself, he would ensure that Storybrooke was safe and protected. 

“I think you should hold on to this,” David whispered and held the dagger out to Killian, his voice shaking a little as he did so.

“Mate, are you sure?”

_“I love you.”_

“She will always be my little girl, pirate, but,” he sighed as he joined the silent vigil, “She’s not a baby anymore and I can’t protect her heart any better than you.  She’s going to fall down, she’s going to fly, she’d going to make mistakes and all we can do is be there to offer her support and comfort.  All we can do is be there to love her, we are her family, but you are her love.”

He thought on that a moment, the sincerity of his words and the meaning of them.  Somewhere along the way, Killian had become a part of this family and the sentiment had not been lost on him.  It had been so long since he’d had a family of his own, he hadn’t wanted to chance speaking it aloud for fear that it would crumble and shrink from his grasp.

“You’re as important to us as she is, you are a part of our family, and you need to get some sleep.  I thought having the dagger nearby… That you might…”

“Feel better?  I know you can protect it just as well as I can mate.”

“I have Snow to wrap my arms around or have her do the same to me for comfort.  If she can’t be here for you, and you can’t sleep, you can hold on to this and ensure that it doesn’t fall in to the wrong hands.”

_“I love you.”_

“Aye, that I can.”

The Prince laid a hand on his shoulder, before heading back to bed and leaving Killian to his solitary watch. 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

At some point, sleep overpowered Killian, but when David rose in the morning and saw the pirate slumped in the same chair as Emma had all those weeks ago after nearly freezing to death, he noticed that the same plaid throw was wrapped around him and dagger was sheathed and cradled to against his heart.  


End file.
